Blue Eyes
by addisongrace22
Summary: How do you go on after losing the one that means the most to you? One-shot.


**So this is kind of a rewrite of a one shot that I posted forever ago, like way back in December. I really did like it, but there were always a few things that I wished I would have changed. So I did go back and change a few of the passages, but the plot is generally the same.**

 **Also, I am hoping to have an update up for at least one of my stories by the end of the week (though I'm not sure which one yet lol), but I hope you guys enjoy this one shot!**

 **Happy reading!**

* * *

I can still imagine him, every part of him. That dumb smirk on his face as he cracks a stupid joke in the passenger seat of the 300, the strong smell of his shampoo when he would sleep next to me, how he would always complain that my coffee wasn't strong enough, the occasional stubble on his chin that would tickle my chin when I kissed him, or that sparkle in his sea blue eyes. But that's all it is, a fleeting figment of my imagination.

Because he's gone. Killed in the line of duty, killed under my watch. I blame myself for his death, I know the rest of the unit has been trying to convince me otherwise, but I will always carry the guilt. It could have been me. But they took him.

It was a late Thursday afternoon, cold crisp air and clear skies, a light powdering of last night's snow covering the sidewalks. We'd been chasing the guy for a couple of weeks, he'd been running a drug ring with bad heroin and people had been dropping like flies all over the city, kids, high school students that didn't know any better. It was one of those cases that just needed to be solved and we were hellbent on making that happen. We knew that he'd be armed with guys to spare, but we thought we were prepared. We weren't, and he paid the consequence.

* * *

" _Chicago PD!" Atwater yells as he breaks the door down. The rest of us are waiting behind him, guns pulled and ready to run. I hear the shuffling and yelling as they men in the house scramble to escape._

" _FREEZE!" Jay yells as he spots one of them running through the back door. Without a second thought, his feet are flying through the air with me hot on his heels. Time seems to stop for a moment as we chase him through the back alleys of Jefferson Park and the only people that exist right now are me, Jay, and the man that will be a felon in a few minutes. We chase him for a little while longer, my breaths becoming heavier and clouding in front of me. That's when I see the flash of silver being pulled from his jacket pocket._

" _Gun!" I scream as a river of bullets leaves the barrel. I wasn't fast enough. My heart stops and I yelp in fear as I watch Jay falls to the ground in front of me, hitting the ground like a bag of rocks._

" _JAY!" I cry as I fall to my knees beside him. I can feel the loose gravel grinding through the denim on my jeans and into my knees, but I don't care. Nothing else matter right now._

" _Go, go Erin," He sputters. "Don't worry about me,"_

" _No," I wail, "I'm not leaving you," I grab my radio, "10-00, officer down, all units respond, roll an ambo to 2307 W. Ainslie,"_

" _Copy, ambo 61 is three minutes out," The staticky voice responds._

 _I rapidly run my hands over his chest, hoping and praying that the vest caught the bullet. But as I pull the vest off of him, the conclusion is quick. It didn't. A vast stain of red quickly spreading throughout his upper chest, hot and sticky. I instantly go into a full on panic and all rational thinking goes out the window. I have to save him, there's no other option._

" _You're going to be okay," I stammer, trying to convince myself as much I as am he. I press my hands to his chest, trying my hardest to stop the flow of blood pouring from the chest wound.I glance down at the sparkling ring on my left hand, placed there by him only a few short month ago. I use one blood soaked hand to remove the jacket sitting atop my vest and roll it into a ball and using it to replace my hand, hoping that it will be even slightly more effective._

" _Erin, Erin," He says as he struggles to place his hand over mine, "I love you,"_

" _No, no, no don't say that," I plead with him, as I feel my heart start to break in my chest, "you're going to be okay, I just need you to hang on a little bit longer. Listen to me do not close, those eyes, just look at me, focus on me. Do not close those eyes! We're going to get married and we're going to get a dog, we're going to do all the things that I told you would never happen, we're going to be so happy. And we're going to have babies, with your blue eyes that'll love you more than anything in the world, so I need you to keep your eyes open!"_

" _Erin," He pleads as he eyes start to blink closed. "I love you," He reiterates with his last ounce of strength._

 _I hear the sirens approaching behind me and take my eyes off of him for a second to see Voight and Antonio running from the blacked out Escalade._

" _What the hell happened?" Voight demands as he runs over to us, both fear and anger present in his dark eyes._

" _He pulled a gun as we were running, just started spraying bullets, he got hit in the chest, right above the vest" I babble, tears now streaming down my face._

" _How long has he been out?" Antonio asks, always the one with a level head in a crisis._

" _Just before you got here," I cry, my hands still pressed to his chest as I try to stop the bleeding. But it's to no avail, his blood has already soaked through my jacket. There's nothing I can do anymore. All I can do is hope._

" _Don't worry," He says, "we got him, he's going to be okay,"_

* * *

I sit on my bed, staring at my reflection in the full length mirror standing freely in the corner. I feel numb, a part of me died that fateful December day. I look foreign to myself. I'm not wearing the formal blues, clad with pins and topped with those caps that we normally wear to these kinds of things. I'm wearing a simple black dress, short sleeves and a square neckline with a pair of patent black wedges. Because I wasn't going as a fellow officer, I am the fiancee. Was the fiancee.

I won't stand with the rest of the unit standing and lined up straight. I will sit with Will and Natalie, being the grieving widow that people give weird casseroles to. I'll pull of that piece of blue tape from the wall and that's all he'll be to the rest of the world, a name on a wall.

They will hand the folded American flag to me and salute me as if I've done something heroic. I haven't. I haven't done anything. I don't want to go. I don't want to have to say goodbye, I just want him back.

I still haven't taken off my ring. It was a daily reminder of everything that I had lost, but I couldn't bring myself to remove it. It felt like that would almost be letting go of him. And I don't want to let go.

* * *

" _Intelligence is the house," Maggie announces as they rush Jay's gurney through the entryway of the ED at Chicago Med, "I want all hands on deck!"_

 _Jay doesn't look like himself, the color is gone from his face, his beautiful blue eyes that are always full of life are covered with pale eyelids. The blood from his chest spread to his face in the wake of his transport, streaks of red crossing his cheeks._

 _Time has stopped for me, my chest is full of pent up pain and tears trickling down my face. I can't feel anything, it's like I'm more numb than numb can be. It feels like a dream, a very very bad dream. A dream that I'll wake up from in a couple minutes and see his smiling face next to me._

" _Jay Halstead, one shot to the upper chest, lost conscious in the field," Sylvie says as Maggie and Connor take the gurney from Gabby and Sylvie. I can tell by the exchange of glances between Maggie and Rhodes that it's not good. They won't say anything to me, but they don't have to, it's all over their faces._

" _We're taking him to Baghdad," Rhodes yells as they rush him towards the trauma bay._

" _Somebody page Halstead and Manning, get them down here now!" Maggie yells as the sliding doors shut behind them. And I'm alone again. The hustle and bustle of the ED hasn't stopped, but he's gone. I stand here powerless, behind the set of closed doors with his blood soaked through my shirt and coating my hands, unable to do anything._

* * *

"Erin," I hear from the living room as my apartment.

"In here," I say absentmindedly as Natalie walks in. She looks put together, her hair perfectly twisted into a low bun behind her head.

She's the only person that could get it. But I don't even know if she does. She's trying to be there for me, I know she is but I just want to push everyone away right now. In other other situation, Jay would be my rock, holding me up and pulling me back to the surface when I fall. But my rock is gone.

"You ready to go?" She says softly.

"I don't want to go," I say, my mind far far away from here.

"Erin," She says, beginning to coax me, "this will be good for you, it'll be some closure,"

"No it won't be," I yell back at her, taking her aback. " I don't need to see him dead or watch the procession or see them lower his casket into the ground!" I scream. "That will not give me closure! I don't want closure," I say, my voice lowering as I feel myself starting to melt. "I don't want closure," I say again as Natalie moves towards me, taking a spot next to me on the bed. "I just want him back," That's when the floodgates open, the tears start pouring out of my eyes and I collapse onto her, with thin arms cradling my head like a small child as I cry into the side of her neck. "God I miss him so much, I just want him back!" I cry. She doesn't say anything, holding me and letting me cry until all the tears have gone.

* * *

" _Erin," Connor says slowly as he emerges from a set of double doors, his scrub cap still tied on his head. I spring up, my head leaving it's place on Antonio's shoulder. The rest of them aren't far behind me, all of them congregating around me in a circular fashion. No one else has cried tonight, I know a lot of them have wanted to, but they are trying to keep on strong faces for my sake. It wasn't really working though. I'd spent the last six hours with my head resting on Antonio's shoulder and my hands held in Kim's, Mouse pacing nervously across from me and Hank sitting stoic in the corner of the room, concern written all over the faces of Kevin and Adam as they sat together ._

" _Yes?" I ask hopefully, the tears long dried across my colorless cheeks._

" _Despite our best efforts," He starts. That all he has to say, I feel my heart shattering inside my chest. The tears I thought had run out return, pouring down my face in full force and Antonio grabbing me and pulling me into a tight hug, taking Jay's normal position._

" _I'm so sorry," He continues, "Jay passed away at 9:47 PM, we tried everything we could Erin, I am so, so sorry," He repeats again. It's real now, there's no possibility that he could wake up again. He's dead, his body is cold and his heart isn't beating, dead._

* * *

"Jay Halstead was a brave soldier and a hell of a cop," Mouse says as he stands on the grass at the head of the coffin. "But more than that he was my best friend, and he was a great one." He says, his eyes starting to gloss over with tears. "We lost someone amazing and the world is worse place without him, but we have to go on, honor his memory and do him right, for I will live the rest of my life trying to half as good of a man as Jay Halstead was," He finishes.

His speech is met with soft applause. His coffin is made of a dark oak, the American laid across it, waiting to be folded into that triangle and handed off to me. But I could care less about what it looks like as all I know is that the love of my life is lying within.

Two men who served with Jay that I don't recognize begin to fold the flag and hand it off to me once finished. I give them a weak nod, biting my bottom lip to keep myself from completely breaking down. They start to lower to coffin to the ground and I feel a lone tear making its way down my face. This is our goodbye.

* * *

A few months have passed since the funeral. They've been hard, but I've been making it though. I never want to go back to where I was after Nadia died, so I haven't let myself near my mother, a pill, or even a drop of alcohol. It's been hard, all I've wanted is something to numb the pain, but I know it'll be worth it and I owe to him to be okay. I'll be okay.

It hurts the same every day when I wake up in my bed and just for a second everything is okay. Then I look over and see that his side is empty. That's when everything hits me again. He's gone, dead and cold in the ground and he's not coming back to me.

But his name is associated with sadness anymore. I remember all the happy times, his smile that would light up a room and the shine in his eyes, the late nights at Molly's, the place that housed our first public kiss and the long car rides, him always teasing me about my inability to let him drive. That's what I remember, because that's all you can do.

I stare out at the vast expansion of grass and graves before me. I stand in between two modest stone pillars, marking the entrance to the cemetery, a bouquet of lilies. He'd told me so many times how much his mother loved him and that if we ever had a daughter, he wanted her name to be Lily, so it only seemed right. I haven't stepped foot in here since the funeral.

I take a deep breath and start the short trek to his grave. His headstone is simple, like him not extravagant or frivolous, just solid and good. He was good. I haven't been here since the funeral, I haven't been able to work up the nerve to come see him again.

I silently place the flowers at the base of his grave and step back, just reveling in his presence. He's not there, obviously but I feel close to him here.

"Hi," I start, twisting my ring around my finger in between my hands. I still haven't been able to convince myself to take it off, though I know I probably should. "I miss you, so so much," I feel a little crazy, standing here talking to a rock basically. Before this and before Camille I never believed in the whole afterlife thing, it seemed arbitrary and illogical, when you were dead, you were dead and that was it.

But there's something comforting about them not really being gone, that they're still there in some say or another and I need to do this. "I just want to know that I'm going to be okay," I've never believed in anything of the sort, but I like the idea that he's looking down on me. "I've got the unit and Will and Natalie and even Owen, but I'm going to be okay, I'm not going to go off the rails again. I promise." I tell him. "Someday I'm going to move on, but just know that you're always going to be in my heart, you were my forever. I love you Jay Halstead, I won't ever stop loving you."

* * *

 **I know that most of you would probably rather have read some fluff after this week's finale, but I hope you liked it!**

 **Please review!**

 **Addie**


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